Stop the presses? Give it a rest!

Wikileaks supremo Julian Assange was recently voted the readers’ choice for TIME magazine’s Person of the Year. In reality, it is unsurprising that a man whose organisation’s decision to leak a quarter of a million secret cables from US embassies should top the poll.

Although the Wikileaks Embassy Cables have caused a storm internationally, I for one find the whole charade a bore at best and a con at worst. A bore because not one of the cables so far released manages to report anything remotely interesting and a con because the hype surrounding the leaks is nothing more than a concerted media effort to make money.

Allow me first to explain what I mean by bore. While the US State Department expressed immense embarrassed by the first wave of leaks, they, along with journalists and readers worldwide, are guilty of over-reacting in pantomime proportions. These thousands of cables supposedly reveal heavily damaging and dangerous diplomatic secrets.

Wrong. All they reveal is gossip. Gossip has been the hallmark of diplomacy for centuries; rulers and politicians say something nice and reasonable in public, something a little more bitchy and critical in private. The Embassy Cables have merely removed a thinly placed veil on what are already well circulated opinions and views.

I cannot found a single document in the leaks that reports something fascinating or indeed worthy of news. Instead we have been treated to such delectable insights as a London cable from the summer of 2009 reporting that Gordon Brown’s government was in meltdown; which young Bernstein and Woodward were responsible for that scoop, I wonder? Or the sensational memo claiming that Berlusconi and Putin are good friends? Not to mention the scandalous revelation that Prince Andrew is rude.

‘Stop the presses!’ this ain’t, yet that is exactly what these alleged stories have done, persistently, for weeks. Put bluntly, the Embassy Cables are the simple and blindingly obvious analyses of often junior diplomats. And readers across the world are inexplicably entranced. Not a single one of the documents set for release is classified as ‘top secret’. But bizarrely they are making headline news and satisfying a seemingly insatiable demand for scandal.

The Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde and Der Spiegel were the lucky media outlets chosen by Wikileaks to exclusively release the cables. Lucky indeed, for the sustained interest that these gradual leaks manage to fuel are endemic of an acutely modern media phenomenon – the rolling news story. Rolling stories are important for an industry that for the past decade has seen a worrying decline in revenue. In the spring of 2009, the Daily Telegraph successfully reversed years of falling revenue with what must now be seen as the Holy Grail of rolling news stories: the MPs Expenses Scandal. For months, the paper released details of thieving politicians sponging off taxpayers’ money.

It caused more than just interest; it successfully ignited a combustible mixture of public outrage with media revelations of political sleaze. Hits to the Telegraph’s website shot upwards, as did its daily circulation and most importantly, so did its revenue from advertising. Coupled with a few official books, the Daily Telegraph profited from the affair, in a way that many newspapers have struggled to do for years. The leaking of the Embassy Cables is a rolling story in exactly the same, cynical mould. The papers that are exclusively revealing the cables have created a sensation out of nothing because it suits their commercial interests.

It may be that out of the 251,827 documents set for release, a handful are worthy of news. But readers are gullible to believe that the entire collection is good enough to make the front pages. In the weeks since the leaks of the cables began, less ‘important’ stories such as the potential for world war breaking out in Korea, have been puzzlingly maligned. The Embassy Cables are unworthy of front page news, and unworthy of our interest.